My simulated life

It seems to me that I spend a lot of time trying to stay happy. Or get happy? Or not feel badly?

I have to sleep. That's first. Very few things can cause me to maintain a sense of peace if I've not gotten enough sleep for several days in a row. I begin to feel paranoid and awkward.

Eating well. I cannot live on ramen alone, and feel good. I've tried. There's got to be some variation for me to feel good. Or decent, at least.

Seeing people.

Not seeing people.

Finding things to do that I find worthwhile. Maintaining that sense of worth in those things. Continuing to do those things.

Not being a waster.

Being a waster.

I just want to feel good about my life, but there are so damn many things crowding for attention, sucking the bad feelings out to blossom like poison fungi. It's so much maintenance.

I used to play "The Sims". I discovered that my roommate at the time had the game, and set it up on my computer. I named my little sim, picked out his look and chose a profession for him. I made him pee and clean himself and get to work on time and sleep and make friends; I even tried to set him up with a female sim that I created to live down the block from him. Then he electrocuted himself, trying to change a light bulb, and died.
I'd never even lost a pet before that.
I got over it, and moved on to the girl down the street and her female roommate. I concentrated on making them go pee and get to work on time and meet friends and dance and talk. I bought them a bookcase with the money they made from working so that they could read and become educated and not electrocute themselves while changing a lightbulb.
They advanced in their occupations and I bought them better appliances to try to make their grooming routines more efficient; it takes so much time to bathe and eat and pee (do sim's poo?). Then they needed to have more friends to advance in their jobs, so I created four more sims using KISS skins that I found on the net and moved the band in on the opposite end of the block from where my first poor sim died of ignorance. Who wouldn't want to party with KISS?
The cops, apparently.
The first time the girls invited the band over, a lady cop showed up at midnight and gave them a ticket for a noise disturbance. I was furious, everyone got upset, and my girls didn't get enough sleep, making them hell to wake up in the morning. How would my government employee ever make and keep 8 friends to fill the requirement to advance to astronaut training if she couldn't even have a small party without the cops showing up to make her feel badly? And why did the cops even show up? The only other houses in my sim neighborhood belonged to a dead guy, the empty house that the KISS guys lived in, and a rich mansion at the far end of town.

At this point in the life of my sims, I stopped for some evaluation. Six months had gone by in my life. I was drinking a lot, and hated my job. I didn't have a girlfriend and often forgot to put the garbage cans out on Sunday night. I wasn't shaving very often.

I was taking care of my sims better than myself.

Fuck.

That bitter revelation was enough to sever my surprisingly weak emotional ties to my sims, and I deleted the program from my hard drive.
A few months later, I moved to a new town and got a girlfriend. I started shaving more frequently and got better about taking the garbage out, and I feel confident that if I can make enough friends out here, I can eventually become an astronaut.